Yahoo Cozies Up to Twitter

Yahoo has announced a partnership with Twitter that includes integrating Twitter content and social features across the Yahoo network.

Yahoo has announced a partnership with Twitter that includes
integrating Twitter content and social features across the Yahoo
network.
In a Feb. 23 blog post on the issue, Yvonne French,
product manager for Yahoo Social programs, said under the agreement
users will be able to view personal Twitter feeds in Yahoo Mail.

"Users who authorize Yahoo will be able to read and update their
Twitter feed from Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo homepage and other locations
across the Yahoo network," French said. "The Twitter (and Facebook)
feeds will be important additions to the rich, diverse Updates feed
that Yahoo users already enjoy," she said.

French said public Tweets are already available in Yahoo search
results and users will see them appear more frequently, for more of
their queries. However, soon users will see topics in Yahoo News,
Finance, Sports and Entertainment enhanced with relevant real-time
Tweets.
Said French:

"A key driver for this Twitter partnership is to enable Yahoo users
to share and stay connected more easily with the people and things they
care about across the Web, in keeping with our Yahoo Open Strategy and
platform. We announced the first phase of this Social Aggregation
Strategy back in December when we outlined our plans to implement
Facebook Connect on Yahoo. Adding Twitter to our users' experiences is
the next phase in this strategy and it further expands the power of the
Yahoo ID as a single key that gives our users an access token to the
best of the Web. Whether they want to check their e-mail, consume
media, comment and participate in communities, or follow their Facebook
newsfeed and Twitter stream, they can now do all of those things
through Yahoo."

Moreover, "With our Twitter integration, Yahoo users will also be
able to update their Twitter (and Facebook) status from the Yahoo
Homepage and from Yahoo Mail," French said. "Activities that users
currently share via Yahoo Updates - such as commenting on an article,
rating a movie or creating a Fantasy Sports team - can optionally be
broadcast to their Twitter stream as Tweets. Eventually, we will extend
this capability to developers, too - if users of your application
currently publish their activities to Yahoo Updates, they will have the
option to also publish these activities into their Twitter
stream."

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.